To be honest, V5 is a long way off and if you are completly new to Umbraco you might want to spend time getting used to the concepts.
It's really important to note that the user interface of umbraco and the key concepts are NOT going to change from V4 to V5, therefore anything you learn today will be useful going forwards into V5.
It's important to note that you can build websites in Umbraco without writing any usercontrols or .net code and these sites should be upgradable no problem.
As others have mentioned it is a while before we'll see Umbraco 5 being used for production development and Umbraco 4 will have on-going support (2 years I believe) so targeting Umbraco 4 as your development is by no means a bad idea.
v5 will see a lot of the same end user and site builder concepts maintained, so skills learnt in those areas wont be for a loss either.
What will be different is the underlying developer skills, from a .NET point of view, but really that's go for any shift from WebForms to MVC anyway. If you're a .NET developer there's no reason that the skills you have developing MVC projects wont be applicable in Umbraco 5, the same way that skills for developing WebForms are valid today.
If you are looking to build extensions to Umbraco which you will want to be targeting both v4 and v5 then you'd be best looking at introducing your own abstraction layers. Separate the logic for your extension away from how you access the data, and separate the UI from the logic. If you have clear points of separation and only generic interfaces between the different layers you'll be able to chop and change the layers when required. If the 'more complex' part of your extensions reside within an assembly which is separated from *anything* Umbraco you'll be able to create different data layers (one for v5 one for v4) and the same with the UI.
That said, targeting both versions of Umbraco for a single extension wont be easy and before venturing down that path you really need to look at what you're wanting to do and decide if it is a viable idea.
Question about future Umbraco 5 and MVC
Hi,
I understand Umbraco 5 will be re-coded with MVC.
I wonder what it means for existing code and extensions that has been built. Is Umbraco 5 going to have full backward compatibility?
Thanks,
Hey Allan,
Welcome to the forum.
Here's my take on what i heard at CodeGarden recently.
There will be no backwards compatibility for packages, DataTypes or userControl that have business logic in them.
A free version of Courier will be made available for the purpose of transfering content, DocTypes, Macros etc.
So to sum up, a 'straight' site with no packages, usercontrols or custom datatypes should be upgradable.
You can also see a introduction to Umbraco 5 here http://codegarden11.com/sessions/day-1/keynote/keynote.aspx (skip to last section)
Hope that helps
Rich
Hi Rick,
Thank you for the prompt response.
>>There will be no backwards compatibility for packages, DataTypes or userControl that have business logic in them.
Is there any best practice guideline to extend umbraco such that extensions won’t be impacted by Umbraco Version upgrade?
I am very new (my 1st day ) to umbraco, but I assume there are safe options to expand it?
Many thanks,
Hey,
To be honest, V5 is a long way off and if you are completly new to Umbraco you might want to spend time getting used to the concepts.
It's really important to note that the user interface of umbraco and the key concepts are NOT going to change from V4 to V5, therefore anything you learn today will be useful going forwards into V5.
It's important to note that you can build websites in Umbraco without writing any usercontrols or .net code and these sites should be upgradable no problem.
These great free videos are well worth a watch if you're just getting started http://umbraco.com/help-and-support/video-tutorials/introduction-to-umbraco
Hope this helps
Rich
Hi Rich,
Thanks for the help. Sure I will spend some time to understand the concepts first.
I am a ASP.NET developer and I was looking for a “developer friendly“ CMS solution. I have been told that Unbraco is quite developer friendly.
Many thanks.
PS. I am impressed with the quick answers I am getting here. Thank you very much!
Hey Allan,
No problem at all, indeed Umbraco is *very* developer friendly and if you're a .NET already then it's a fantastic CMS choice.
Umbraco is very powerful out the box even without writing one line of .NET but it's great to know that it can be extended too.
Also now that Razor has been introduced you'll fine your .NET skills transfer very well.
Hope you enjoy learning, post back if you have any more questions.
Rich
As others have mentioned it is a while before we'll see Umbraco 5 being used for production development and Umbraco 4 will have on-going support (2 years I believe) so targeting Umbraco 4 as your development is by no means a bad idea.
v5 will see a lot of the same end user and site builder concepts maintained, so skills learnt in those areas wont be for a loss either.
What will be different is the underlying developer skills, from a .NET point of view, but really that's go for any shift from WebForms to MVC anyway. If you're a .NET developer there's no reason that the skills you have developing MVC projects wont be applicable in Umbraco 5, the same way that skills for developing WebForms are valid today.
If you are looking to build extensions to Umbraco which you will want to be targeting both v4 and v5 then you'd be best looking at introducing your own abstraction layers. Separate the logic for your extension away from how you access the data, and separate the UI from the logic. If you have clear points of separation and only generic interfaces between the different layers you'll be able to chop and change the layers when required.
If the 'more complex' part of your extensions reside within an assembly which is separated from *anything* Umbraco you'll be able to create different data layers (one for v5 one for v4) and the same with the UI.
That said, targeting both versions of Umbraco for a single extension wont be easy and before venturing down that path you really need to look at what you're wanting to do and decide if it is a viable idea.
is working on a reply...